Held To Ransome

End of the day

She was tired.  After the argument she hadn't spoken to him.  He hadn't spoken to her.  Now almost a month had gone by.  A month wasted through pride, fear, apathy, call it what you wanted.  A month wasted.  Her secret baby had grown, her chances of getting by without that secret being found out, diminished.

Emily and her had made up, hugging and crying. Terry had smiled and the three of them had talked about the baby and the birth together, finally exorcising the demons that threatened them all.  Except it wasn't all of them was it?

God she missed him so much.  

Gently caressing her thickening waistline, she smiled.  One good thing had come out of this.  Well more than one, she had her memories.  She would always have her memories.  She had tried not to replace them with the less pleasant ones.

They'd pretty much managed to avoid each other, Tom filming more in the studios and her keeping to the house and the marshes.  There were a couple of awkward encounters in the village, not so much unpleasant as embarrassing.  For everyone.  They'd smiled and spoken and even gone for coffee once but it just hadn't been the same.  It's difficult to speak when one of you is walking on egg shells and the other stuck on a high horse.

Now, she had to accept it.  She'd blown it.  She'd made his choice for him.  The only thing she could do now was communicate through Luke, about the baby, about appointments and if he was going to ever collect his stuff from her house.  Secretly, she hoped not.  Secretly, she wore his shirts to bed.  Their bed.  Their empty, lonely bed.

He wasn't going to come home though was he?  Come charging over the marshes, coat flapping and ruddy cheeked from the effort.  She wasn't going to be swept away in some romantic embrace.  It wasn't going to be happy ever after.  

Sitting here, where she'd first seen him, all that time ago, she smiled.  Life really wasn't like a book - romantic or otherwise.  Time to wake up and smell... yeah, coffee.  Time for coffee.  It had been a long day. She wouldn't sleep anyway, so why bother if she drank coffee at this time of night?  Maybe it wasn't good for Bean, after all if caffeine gave her a buzz... but then, if coffee was all she had to worry about, she was doing well.

Getting up, she stretched and looked around.  The marshes would always be surprising. One day blue sky and green mossy mattress to lie and watch the skylarks; the next glowering grey sky and harsh, windswept heathland. At least their ever changing nature was one constant in her life.

Walking back to the house, she watched as the last rays of the sun disappeared.  Now it was dark. The velvet blackness studded with stars. It would be a beautiful, if chilly, night.  Closing her door behind her, she lit the little table lamps dotted about and then the fire in the grate.  Some saw it as a chore, she saw it as an act of love to the house, restarting it's heart.  From outside, it resembled nothing so much as a glowing and happy face. The golden eyes of the windows welcoming all and sundry.

As she made her coffee, she looked at the shelf, the mug was still there.  The handle broken from where she'd thrown it that fateful afternoon. She just couldn't part with it.  The last link to what might have been.  Emails to him had gone unanswered and even a good old fashioned letter or two.  She'd known he'd done the right thing, at the end of the day she'd left him virtually no choice. But Jesus Christ, it hurt.  Understanding it and living with it were two completely different animals.

The locals never mentioned him in front of her, but she knew.  She knew they talked about those few months when the actor and the painter - for that's how they described her - had shared a romance to set the heath alight.  Her secret still intact for now. Then he had gone.  Like all literary heroes do.  In a flurry of tears and regret.  Now, all she had were photos in her phone and the painting in the hall.  The one they had done together, literally hand in hand.  Another thing repaired after their fight that she couldn't bear to part with.